The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) will soon launch a new initiative to target micro and small businesses, allowing them to file their taxes in a flexible and simplified manner throughout the country.

The move is aimed at widening the tax net and ensuring some domestic revenue loopholes are sealed.

Acting Commissioner-General of the GRA, Anthony Kwasi Sarpong, disclosed this to Joy Business after engaging executives and selected members of the Ghana Union of Traders Association, GUTA, in Accra.

He also assured that the GRA will institute a quarterly engagement with businesses to enhance tax education.

“For GRA, as tax administrators, we mobilise revenue for national development; therefore, we see businesses as one of the core partners that we deliver on our mandate”.

“If businesses grow and thrive and are supported, we believe that they will make the necessary profit and we can also collect our taxes. So in this respect, GUTA [Ghana Union of Traders] is a big stakeholder in our partnership, hence the need to meet some of the executives to explain to them some of the tax measures,” he said.

The initiative known as the Modified Taxation Programme aims to provide a platform for micro businesses to be registered and file their taxes in a simplified way.

The Acting Commissioner General told Joy Business that the engagement with GUTA is part of the processes to create a friendly customer service environment for both taxpayers and the GRA.

“The engagement has been very fruitful after we had the opportunity to explain to them some challenges faced in their tax filing process. We have agreed that we shall have a quarterly engagement with them so we can speak on some of their concerns”, he mentioned.

“Again, we have mentioned processes we’re undertaking to widen the tax net and in this case a number of their members are not registered for taxes and at GRA we will soon be launching the modify taxation programme that allows us to register several small, micro and individual businesses and work with them to pay their taxes in a more convenient and simplified manner. So today was the first engagement with them. We shall move to the market to meet with the actual operators to explain to them so that it becomes easy when we launch it,” he disclosed.

The President of GUTA, Joseph Obeng, expressed confidence that such engagements will boost the confidence of businesses in supporting the government to meet its revenue target.

The Commissioner General answered questions from members of GUTA and promised to further engage the Finance Minister to find solutions to some of their concerns.